Isn’t it good to be in church together today? Friday night at home as a family we were reading the part of the Gospels where Jesus was crucified and buried. We took some time to explain all the events leading up to that moment, and then explained that Jesus was going to be in the grave until Sunday, when he would then be resurrected. As we talked about that coming resurrection morning we mentioned the women going to the tomb on that morning. One of the younger Smiths raised their hand and asked a question – kids ask good questions, lol) This kid asked: “Shouldn’t the women have been in church on Sunday morning instead of going to the grave?” How would you answer that! Anyway, I say all that to say, “I’m glad you are all here.” I also want to say that we don’t go to the grave this morning to look for a dead Jesus, but instead we come to church because we know Jesus is risen!
We get to do two things today: we get to preach a Resurrection themed sermon while continuing through our Galatians study. Today we come to a very famous verse, a verse that is instantly a memory verse for anyone who starts reading the Bible. Galatians 2:20 stands out for both its beautiful expression, but also its theological depth. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Tell me that verse is not instantly a verse you want to commit to memory when you hear it and instantly you know there is something about that verse, even if you don’t yet grasp everything it is saying!
This is a resurrection verse because the truths in this verse are only true because Jesus has been raised. Everything this verse is talking about is based on Jesus coming back from the grave.
- we have been united to Christ and that cannot be true without his resurrection…
- Christ lives in us only because He is alive from the dead…
- living by faith in Him is impossible unless He is gloriously raised up from the dead.
We could preach on the resurrection from anywhere in the Bible:
- The Old Testament prophesied the resurrection of Christ with those famous words of Psalm 16 that Peter quoted in the very first sermon of Church history, “You, O God, will not abandon me [Christ] to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.” We see more resurrection prophecies in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and many others.
- The Gospels recorded the resurrection event and the memorable events surrounding it – from the stone rolled away to the empty grave to the appearance of angels, and from the confusion of the disciples to the appearance Jesus made to more than 500 believers after He came back to life. When Jesus said before he was crucified that He would build His Church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it He was guaranteeing His resurrection in order to do that very task: building His Church.
- Then, as the letters of the NT were written so much of the theological importance of the resurrection was explained for the Church.
- Peter explained that the resurrection was the fulfillment of prophecy (Acts 2), and that a new birth, a living hope and our inheritance are now ours because God raised Jesus from the dead (1 Pet 1).
- John tells us to recognize false teachers in that they deny Christ came in flesh – meaning not only that he came into the world as a human being, but also that he came back from the grave bodily.
- Then we have Paul telling us the Resurrection proved Christ was God’s Son (Rom 1), it accomplished our justification (Rom 4), that our faith is pointless but God really does forgive sins because of the resurrection (1 Cor 15), and that since Jesus was raised He will raise up everyone someday and He will be the judge at the end of the world (Acts 17)
- Peter explained that the resurrection was the fulfillment of prophecy (Acts 2), and that a new birth, a living hope and our inheritance are now ours because God raised Jesus from the dead (1 Pet 1).
Another one of those explanations of how important the resurrection is comes from our passage today, Galatians 2:20. Lets go under 4 headings today: 1) Dead With Christ, 2) Christ Lives In Me, 3) Living By Faith, 4) A Death of Love
DEAD WITH CHRIST
Our first thought to raise out of this text is “DEAD WITH CHRIST.” Look at the first part of the verse, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live….”
First, look at how this is past tense: “I HAVE BEEN…I NO LONGER….” This death happened in the past and being dead continues. This death is our position before God. Our old man in Adam, the old person we were without Christ and condemned in sin, is not counted as dead. Death “has come” to that old me so that 2 Corinthians 5:17 now says, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation, the old person has gone and the new has come forth.”
Second, this death is a united death with Christ. Look at how Paul says it, “I have been crucified WITH CHRIST…” I no longer live, I died, I was crucified WITH Christ. Somehow I am dead, somehow the real crucifixion of my Lord Jesus is also something I become a participant in and I become identified with. In other words, while Jesus was actually crucified and I was not, nonetheless somehow God considers me crucified and dead – having been joined to Jesus in His crucifixion and death. As far as God is concerned, my faith in Jesus means I am now so united to Christ that His crucifixion and death now count for me also.
Lets open this part up. Turn with me to Romans 6:5-8 The specific point is that now we Christians are united to Him in His death, similar to how he was united to our sins when he died. We actually sinned, He did not. But God considered our sins to be the sins of Jesus and counted our sins against Him. This means that now our actual sins are not counted against us, because they were credited to Jesus. As they were credited to Him, and God considered Him guilty for all our sins, Jesus then actually died. That death was the penalty for our sins. Now get this: now that we put our faith in Jesus, God considers us to have died along with Christ. We didn’t actually die, we weren’t actually crucified, but God credits that death to us and counts us as having died when Christ died. We actually sinned, but we didn’t actually suffer the penalty of death for our sins. Christ suffered that penalty and died for us, and now that we are united to Christ we are so “one” with Him that His death counts for us too so that God sees us as having been “crucified with Christ.”
But what does that mean? The context of the passage informs us: the death penalty the Law demanded of us for our sin was paid for by Jesus. He died our death that the Law demanded.
When we put our faith in Jesus we are united with Jesus in His crucifixion and death. Our standing is now changed forever and we are now identified with Christ in His crucifixion and death. Turn to Romans 6 with me.
CHRIST LIVES IN ME
The next point is Christ lives in me. Look at verse 20 again, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me….”
Paul says that while he is dead, Christ now lives in him. This is the most powerful, transformative, accomplished truth in history. Does Christ live in you? That is the question. The question is not whether you go to church, or you grew up in church, or you grew up in youth group and went to Christian schools, and if you’ve been baptized and if your parents and grandparents were Christians and went to church. The question is not whether you “know” the bible and you’ve “heard it before.” The question is Does Christ live in you? Eternal life, new life, being a child of God, inheriting the kingdom to come, all of it depends on whether or not Christ is in you. Is Christ in you? Every single person who has looked in faith to Jesus for salvation has Jesus living in them. This truth is all over the New Testament:
- Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17, “I will continue to make you known to them so that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
- Paul challenged the Corinthians to examine themselves to see if Christ was in them (2 Cor. 13).
- Ephesians 3:17 says through faith Christ dwells in our hearts.
- Speaking of believers, Colossians 3:11 says Christ is in all
- This truth of Christ in us is what Colossians 1:27 declares is the “hope of glory.” Our confidence of the coming glory and entering into it is guaranteed because Christ is in us.
Christ came in human flesh, in a manger. Then Christ was in Israel, doing miracles and preaching. Then Christ was in a grave after he was crucified. Now Christ is in heaven, in his rightful glory that belongs to Him. He is returning and will rule in His kingdom. But – BUT(!) – does He also live in you?
LIVING BY FAITH
The third point for us to pull out here is Living By Faith. Look at Galatians 2:20 again how Paul says it, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God…” Living by faith is one theme in Galatians. Paul says in 3:11, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Righteousness and life come only by faith in Christ. Righteous living can only come from faith. Then, in 5:6 Paul says the most important and defining characteristic of living by faith is love: “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” In other words, the only thing that matters with God is our faith living itself out in Christian love.
Notice that this is a new life, not a continuation of the old life. “The life I NOW live in the body….” It is a life that cannot be lived except through faith, and except you are joined to the living resurrected Christ.
APPLICATION: The greatest proof of Christ’s resurrection is He lives in us. Fellow Christians, do we deny His resurrection by forbidding Him to live in us? By forbidding Him to live through us? By our insistence that we live how we want and according to our rules – disregarding the living Christ and His authority over us?
Second, this life is lived out by faith. “We live by faith and not by sight,” 2 Corinthians 5:7 teaches. My new life and living it out only comes from faith in Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead and living in me! Living by faith I stand firm (2 Cor 1:24) and am filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy (1 Peter 1:8). The motivation to follow any command is faith, the way we go about following any command is by faith, and the root of all fruit-filled living is faith. There is no such thing as obeying God apart from faith. Romans 14 says, “Anything that does not come from faith is sin.” The fruit of real faith is love – for God and others.
Third, real faith is in Jesus Christ. “The life I now live in the body,” Paul says, “is lived by faith in the Son of God….” Not ourselves, not idols, not others, not government, not wealth, not anything else. Real faith in the real Jesus Christ. There are “other” Jesus’s, Paul warns in 2 Corinthians 11. But the real Jesus was crucified, died, buried and then gloriously, powerfully, raised to life again.
A DEATH OF LOVE
Finally, we see a death of love. Notice the last half of verse 20, “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who LOVED me and GAVE Himself FOR me.” Do not miss the indivisible connection between Christ’s love for us and His death for us. His was a death of love – by which I do not mean that love died out. I mean the death Jesus willingly suffered was because of His great love for us – “He loved me and gave Himself for me.”
First, do you see how personal this is? Paul words it in the first person, “He loved ME and gave Himself for ME…” You must move past “Jesus loved the world and died for the world” to “Jesus loves me and died for me.” It is true, but you personally must accept it and it must be yours.
Second, Love gives. God’s love is proven in His giving. “But God DEMONSTRATES His own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners Christ Jesus died for us.”
APPLICATION: Measure your love by your giving. I’m not talking about money, although that is part of it somewhere. Giving of yourself and what is most important to you. “Husbands LOVE your wives as Christ LOVED the Church and GAVE Himself for her.” Love gives. Measure your love for God, for others, by your giving.
APPLICATION: See how loved you are. And accept it. Many people struggle with whether they are loved. They weren’t loved by their parents, by families, by friends, by others. Deep down many cannot fathom that God loves them. But God has answered this so definitively that it is impossible to overstate this point: the cross of Jesus Christ is an irrefutable proof of God’s love for you. There is NO other explanation for God offering His Son to be crucified for you. This is why God in His wisdom has made John 3:16 the most famous verse in history, “For God so LOVED the world that He GAVE His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.” Love gives. God loves, so God gives.
Because God gives, all you have to do is receive. In 2013 James Howells had 8,000 bitcoins that were worth a couple million dollars. The information for those bitcoins were on a hard drive. One day when cleaning his office he accidentally threw away that hard drive. Without that hard drive he could not do anything with his bitcoins and it essentially meant he lost all that money. Since then he has done everything possible under the sun to get permission to search the local trash dump – to no avail. Today, those lost bitcoins are worth anywhere from $800-950M.
How do you go on with life after dedicating 12 years to finding a lost fortune and failing? Who knows. But let me ask a question: He is trying everything possible to find that fortune, but what if instead of a life of searching piece by piece through hundreds of tons of trash someone offered to give him that fortune outright? What if someone said, “Hey, what you’re looking for you’ll never find. Its impossible. But I’ll give it to you as a gift. Do you want it?” Imagine if James Howell said “No thanks. I want to keep at it. I’m pretty sure I can find it. Where’s the honor in a gift? I’ll just take my chances in the dump.” What would you think of him?
Thats you. You’re James Howell. You are searching the trash dump of this world trying to find the fortune of eternal life. You’re trying everything you can think of hoping it will succeed. But Jesus is standing here saying, “What you’re looking for you can never find. It’s impossible. Give up. Give up and I’ll give it to you as a gift.” And as long as you go on turning Jesus Christ down you are a glorified trash picker – picking through the trash of your life in this trashy world hoping that out of all this trash you’ll find something that will get you into God’s kingdom. Give it up. Put down the trash so your hands are empty and you can take hold of the gift that the resurrected Jesus Christ is offering you. ….COMMUNION